George Bilgere

Goodreads Author

Billy Collins once commented that poet George Bilgere "has shown that imaginative wonders and deep emotional truths can be achieved with plain, colloquial American speech." Bilgere has done so in his six collections of poetry, most recently "Imperial" (Pitt Poetry Series). His numerous awards include the May Swenson Poetry Award and a Pushcart Prize. A professor of English at John Carroll University in Cleveland, he is also host of the public radio program WORDPLAY, an offbeat mix of poetry and comedy.

Preview — Haywire
by George Bilgere

All morning he drifts the spacious lawnslike a gleaner, picking up this and that,the summer clouds immense and buildingtoward afternoon, when the heat drives himunder the shade of the oak trees in the quadand then along cool corridors insideto pull down last term's flyers

For the chamber recital, the poetry reading,the lecture on the ethics of cloning,the dinner with some ambassador,the debate between Kant and Heidegger,the frat party, the sorority party, the kegger,the weekend Bergman festival, the Wednesdayscreening of Dumb and Dumber. He sayshello to fine young ladies, and triesnot to dwell on their halter tops,their tanned thighs, shorts up to here.

At five he climbs into an old, dumpster-coloredolds, lights up and heads homeacross the barge-ridden river in its servitudeto East St. Louis, where you knowthis poem—glib, well-meaning, trivial--grows tongue-tied, and cannot follow.”
―
George Bilgere

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